How to Sort a VARCHAR Column with Mixed Numbers and Letters in SQL Server?

Sorting a VARCHAR Column Containing Numbers in SQL Server

Sorting a VARCHAR column that contains a mix of letters and numbers can be challenging, especially when the desired order is numerical for numeric values.

Approach:

The recommended approach is to pad numeric values with a leading character to ensure they all have the same string length. This allows SQL Server to compare the values numerically.

Solution:

SELECT MyColumn
FROM MyTable
ORDER BY
    CASE ISNUMERIC(MyColumn)
        WHEN 1 THEN REPLICATE('0', 100 - LEN(MyColumn)) + MyColumn
        ELSE MyColumn
    END

In this query:

• ISNUMERIC checks if the value is numeric.
• REPLICATE creates a string with a specified number of leading zeros.
• The result of this CASE expression is then used as the sorting criteria.

Example:

Consider a column named "MyColumn" with the following values:

• "1"
• "10"
• "2"
• "A"
• "B"
• "B1"

Using the above query, the sorted results would be:

1
2
10
A
B
B1

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